… even when it isn’t pleasant.
Now the tough stuff.
It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been making a deliberate effort to remove, or reframe, Black history in federal, public, and educational spaces, describing narratives of slavery and systemic racism as “divisive” or “anti-American.” These efforts include executive orders targeting critical history, removing exhibits, and reducing funding for diversity programs.
Anyone questioning that effort might benefit from listening to a recent episode of Fresh Air at NPR. Those who support that effort, might like to know what exactly the administration is wanting to pretend isn’t the reality of systemic racism.
Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who works for human rights has been working to counter the damage caused by erasing the truth of Black history, and in the interview with Terry Gross on March 25, he talks about what a disaster it is to be trying to wipe out mention of the horror that was slavery and the subsequent racial Injustice in the United States.
Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons, and EJI operates the Legacy Sites to create new spaces, markers, and memorials that address the history of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation.
A history that is relevant today and many wish would just go away.
Even though I’m aware of so much of this history there’s still much I didn’t know. Some of those things are truly even more horrific than what I did know, and I’ll admit I squirmed in my seat more than a little bit listening to Stevenson talk about the thousands of lynchings of black people in the south that were never reported in newspapers controlled by white people. Some of these lynchings were for indiscretions as minor as a Black man failing to call a police officer, “Sir.”
There are also too many instances of children being beaten, raped, and even lynched for the ‘crime’ of holding a sign asking for voting rights for their mothers and grandmothers back when those women were not allowed to vote. Or protesting the voter suppression that had absurd questions Black people were required to answer when attempting to register to vote. By 1900, the majority of Black folks were literate, but even many of the best-educated of these men continued to “fail” the literacy tests administered by white registrars. Whites were often not required to take any kind of test.
The horrible violence and discrimination Stevenson talks about aren’t easy for anybody to hear. But the point that he wants to make in all of his writing and speaking engagements is that we never get to any form of reconciliation or repair unless the truth is told.
My understanding of “telling the truth” is not to blame the people now for what happened in the past, it’s only to lay blame on those who become aware of what happened, but that awareness never moves their heart. They continue to pretend that Black people who protest and work for justice and equality – “Making good trouble,” as the late Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis liked to describe activism, are just troublemakers.
Black people just need to get over it.
What we need to get over is that sense of entitlement that White people have espoused for so long, especially the rich and powerful men who hide their racism behind smiles and handshakes, but secretly still believe a Black man is only three-fifths of a human.
When he was first practicing law in Montgomery, AL, Stevenson spent time with Rosa Parks, as well as activists Johnnie Carr and Virginia Durr. They would meet to discuss his efforts in fighting racial bias in the justice system, and those conversations shaped the activist he has become. He recounts one of the many things Parks told him that he’s never forgotten, “I’m going to call you from time to time and I’m going to ask you to do this or that… You’re going to say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ okay?”
His response, “Yes, ma’am.”
He has been saying, “Yes, ma’am” ever since, and it’s clear that he has a tremendous passion for his work – a passion fueled by knowledge. What he has learned through years of working in the skewed justice system, as well as extensive research in archives of Black publications that told the horrible truths that the White newspapers failed to do, drives him to work tirelessly for equal justice.
How can we keep pretending everything is just fine when it clearly isn’t?
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That’s all from me for today folks. I hope your weekend is a good one, filled with fun and relaxation. I’ll be back in my sewing room to work on a quilt. Picture to come when I finish.
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